Navy NCIS: The Good Books
by Might N' Magic
Summary: Case file. The NCIS crew finds a mutilated corpse in the woods. It appears to be the body of a Naval Aviator, but who? It looks like a new serial killer could be on the loose. Final Chapter posted, along with an extra chapter from me about the story.Enjoy
1. The Cult of Osiris

Larry Jackson would never forget the body he found in front of the Sands that cold day not so long ago. He never again visited the Sands. Indeed, he hadn't taken a single drink since. He had spent more time at home with his family, more time being a father to kids he had neglected, and more time enjoying life sober rather than drunk.

"Wow, the air really is fresher up here isn't it?" Larry asked his wife Rose.

"Yes honey, I've been telling you for months that camping really is relaxing."

"I know."

Rose had been trying to convince him for some time to take a camping trip with her. He kept pushing it off, saying he didn't want to go through a stressful camping trip full of bugs and lack of amenities he had grown accustomed to. But this was far different than he had imagined. The kids were at their grandparents house, and it was just the two of them alone in the woods, with fresh air and no one around for miles.

"I think I'm going to go for a hike."

Rose rolled her eyes at her husband. "Really getting into this aren't you?"

"When in Rome..."

"Yeah yeah, enjoy yourself."

Larry gave her a puzzled look. "You aren't coming?"

"Well if one of us wants to go for a hike, the other one has to actually set up the camp site. Pitching the tent was nice dear, but there's still other things to be done."

He missed the hint. "I'll help when I get back sweetie, I promise."

"Uh huh."

He smiled his most charming smile to her and laced up his hiking boots.

"Don't get lost out there Larry. It's called the wilderness for a reason."

It was his turn to roll his eyes dramatically. "Don't worry! I have the tracking senses of a jungle cat!"

With that he disappeared into the forest. An hour later he was starting to wonder how good the tracking senses of jungle cats were. He knew he wasn't lost, he could hear sounds far off in the distance that had to be man made, but every time he got close to them they seemed to be coming from another direction. Finally he got back on a path that seemed somewhat familiar. He followed it until he came to a small clearing that was not familiar. Here he pulled out his cell phone and waved it into the air trying to get any sort of reception. Nothing.

He grumbled something about hating camping and wandered back out into the woods. Again he found a path and followed it, but this time the results were quite different. He stopped short when he saw the ground in front of him stained with something red. At first he thought it might be paint, perhaps marking off the boundaries of property ownership. These yahoos in the boonies did a lot of crazy things.

"Holy shit!" He exclaimed as he walked further into the scene.

Blood was splattered everywhere. It was splashed against the trees around him and it pooled out into the dirt and mud. In the center of it all was a naked body, seemingly hacked and mutilated most viciously. Larry was too stunned to move at first, and was especially taken aback by what appeared to be totems and religious icons surrounding the body. He did not however notice the small aviator's wings sitting next to the body that designate their wearer as a United States naval pilot.

He fumbled with his cell phone as he got it out and was both relieved and slightly nervous to see that he did in fact have a faint signal on it. Just as last time, his first call was not to his worried wife.

-----

"Hey Ducky! Welcome back from across the pond."

Ducky smiled at Tony's lame attempt at British laden humor.

"Thank you Tony."

"How was Britain?"

"Lovely as usual. I had the opportunity while I was there to inspect the ruins of a 3rd century Roman fortification not too far from my home. The Romans really were fascinating in their time..."

"That's great Ducky! We're all glad to have you back!" Tony dodged.

Ducky shook his head and moved past the still stupidly grinning Tony to make for the elevator that led to his morgue. He used the stairs to get to the desks of his fellow team members, hoping to regale them with the things he had learned while on his vacation trip to his homeland. But if Tony was an indicator of their interest level, there wasn't much point in trying any further. He was just pushing the down button to the morgue when Gibbs charged into the room with his usual strong gait.

"Hold it there Ducky, we're all on our way out."

Ducky sighed. It looked like there would be no break between his vacation and his work.

"Where to Boss?"

"Put your boots on." Gibbs ordered Tony.

"Boots? There hasn't been snow on the ground for weeks."

Kate finally looked up from her desk to glare at him as she casually took boots out of the lower drawer in her desk.

"But I don't have boots here at the office." Tony whined.

Kate smiled at him. "Don't tell me you're worried about ruining your shoes?"

Tony smiled back sarcastically. "No. But then, it never occurred to me to keep a small shoe store in my desk. Must be a girl thing."

Kate flushed slightly red then marched behind Gibbs out of the office. Tony continued his smile, now gleefully at his undeclared victory for this round.

-----

It took awhile for them to get out to the site of the murder.

"My word." Ducky breathed.

He was the first to see the carnage on hand.

Blood was everywhere. It splattered against the trees and still pooled and ran slightly from the corpse in the center of the small grove. The trees were also marked with notches and symbols. Spent candles littered the ground with piles of sand and rocks around them.

The rest of the team slowly filtered onto the scene and Kate immediately began taking dozens of photographs. Tony wandered around peering at the symbols and the body, but this scene was far beyond the depth of his streetwise history. Gibbs too seemed to be at a loss.

"Ducky?" He called out questioningly.

"Well. It is clearly a ritualistic killing. These symbols, sacrificial candles, and the way the body was dismantled and cut apart is far more precise than any random killing, even for a brutal sociopath."

"A sacrificial ritual killing? When was the last time this kind of thing happened in the area?"

Tony rolled his eyes at Kate. "When was the last time something like this happened in the United States period?"

Ducky nodded to Tony. "Yes I think Tony is correct, this sort of killing never really took hold in America, with the exception of your big name psychotic serial killers."

"Always nice to be famous for something." Tony quipped.

Ducky grinned slightly but mostly ignored him and continued.

"No, this wasn't done by someone in it purely for the joy of killing, as so many wayward mentally challenged killers are. This was precise, old, and careful."

"What do you mean old?" Kate asked.

"This kind of pattern, this level of intricacy and the symbols. This isn't something he got out of a movie, and it isn't something he could have made up himself, unless he's a university professor of history. This is an old ritual. It even seems slightly familiar from some of my studies."

Ducky stood up and looked around, finally giving the trees their first real professional appraisal. Tony followed his gaze.

"Any idea what those symbols mean?" Tony asked.

Kate joined them while taking photographs of the trees. "They look like pictographs. Hieroglyphics?" Kate ventured.

Ducky nodded. "Yes I believe they are, excellent observation."

She beamed at the compliment.

"Yes these are definitely Egyptian hieroglyphs. I can't make out precisely what they say, I will need some of my books back at the lab, and perhaps Abby's computer contraptions to help decipher it."

Gibbs, who until now was content to sit back, soak up information and let his people work finally stepped in.

"Ducky, what was the actual cause of death?"

He bent down to examine the body closely, but shook his head.

"Impossible to tell from here. I'll have to get him back to the morgue and do a proper autopsy."

"What exactly are we dealing with? A bunch of crazy witches dressed in robes dancing around a bonfire?" Tony blurted out.

"No Tony, nothing so stereotypical. But this is clearly an occult killing, or to be more specific, a cult killing."

They looked around some more and bagged evidence. Soon the coroner found a way through the woods and reached the site to pick up the body.

"Who discovered the body? Please tell me it wasn't a group of cub scouts on a camping trip." Kate said with real concern.

"Worse maybe." Tony smiled to her.

"What's worse than little cub scouts finding a bloody corpse?"

"Little boys would probably thing it's cool. But our unfortunate camper, Larry Jackson, did not."

"Jackson. You don't mean the same guy who found that marine in front of the bar?"

"The same."

"How's he reacting to it?"

Tony and Kate both looked off to the side to see Larry Jackson talking to another NCIS lower level agent. He had a blank look on his face and appeared to be in a serious state of shock.

"Let's go." Gibbs cut into their useless chatter.

"Back to the office boss?"

"Until we can identify whoever this is, yes. We have to let Ducky and Abby do their thing."

-----

The next day they arrived at the office to find an excited Ducky and even more excited Abby.

"Well, out with it." Gibbs said impatiently.

Ducky moved to speak but Abby cut him off excitedly.

"I scanned the photos you took of the symbols on the trees into a database of ancient texts. There were five all together, and two of them matched hieroglyphics we have on record. The first was the hieroglyph for Osiris, and the second for Abydos. The other three had markings that are synonymous with other writings, but nothing actually used in ancient texts."

"Good job Abs, but what do they mean?"

"I believe I can answer that Jethro." Everyone settled back for a moment, preparing for the lengthy dissertation they expected to follow.

"Abydos was the ancient Egyptian funeral god. His placement at the site of the death means that our killer might actually of intended for that site to be the final burial site of the slain."

"Which means he wasn't expecting to get caught." Tony piped in.

"What criminal ever is?" Kate shot back.

"All of them expect to be pursued. And of course they all think they are smart enough to get away with whatever they did. But this guy expected no one to find the site, and if they found it expected them to leave it as is. He's a few girls short of a swimsuit issue."

"Tony is probably right. The site is of religious importance to him. However, the first hieroglyph Abby mentioned is more important than the second."

"Osiris?" Kate questioned.

"Yes. It signifies our murderer as a follower of the Cult of Osiris, or at least someone who follows their rituals down to the last gruesome detail. The three symbols we cannot identify are most likely indicators of our deceased's akh, ba, and ka."

Practically everyone in the room raced to speak first. Gibbs beat them to it.

"Ducky..."

"I know Jethro. Egyptian mythology is rather confusing at times. Whereas the more well known Greek and Roman mythos, where gods and goddesses are in charge of one or two things and it stays that way, Egyptian gods often warred with one another and stole each other's powers. The akh, ba and ka however refer to the Egyptian afterlife. Each represents a different part of the person, their soul, their unchanging form in the afterlife, their personality, so on and so forth."

"Does that help us at all?" Gibbs asked.

Abby answered that. "I have one of the lab computers running permutations on the symbols. Hieroglyphics are combinations of sets, much in the same way words are combinations of letters. Two different parts of a picture can be combined in different ways to form different words. The problem with these, are that while the base symbols are all real, they were never combined in such a way in known Egyptian texts."

"Meaning?" Gibbs was getting slightly impatient with this history lesson.

"It may help us and it may not. If the computer comes up with a halfway accurate translation of the three symbols, we'll have a lot of insight into how the killer viewed his victim. Other than that, it's back to the usual forensic lab work to gather the rest."

"I think we forgot something."

Everyone looked at Tony with a slightly pained glare. It wasn't often Tony caught something everyone else missed.

"What might that be?" Kate smirked.

"Identity of the victim? It's hard to go question base personnel if we don't know what base to go to."

Gibbs raised his eyebrows at Ducky.

"I can't tell you with any certainty, I need another day for DNA and dental records to be checked. But I can give you some basics. The victim was male, 6'2, maybe two hundred ten pounds or so. And the body was fresh. This murder happened within ten to fourteen hours of when Mr. Jackson found the body."

Gibbs wasted no time in taking command of the situation.

"Alright. Abby, Ducky, I want to know the specific cause of death. Kate, check Naval logs and see what carrier groups are home. Tony check with the local Naval bases and air stations. Both of you check to see if they are missing any male pilots meeting the general description Ducky gave."

"Do I need boots this time?" Tony joked, looking at Kate.

"You will if you don't keep your big mouth shut."

Kate smiled back at him.

"Get moving people."


	2. Identity Crisis

A full day of searching produced mixed results.

"There has to be more than this!" Gibbs was losing his patience.

"Sorry Boss, I checked with the local bases, and for that matter with every base and air station on the east coast. No missing pilots that are unaccounted for. Everyone checks in as alright."

"Kate?"

"Two carrier air groups, the _Lincoln_ and the _Kitty Hawk_ are currently in port for refitting. The pilots still report for daily training and checks on their aircraft. But of the two groups only one is missing an airman, and that airman is a woman."

"Is it possible he's a retired pilot who wears his wings out of a sense of honor?" Kate ventured.

"Sure it's possible, but not extremely likely. The local authorities shouldn't have kicked this one up to us until they had a positive identification on the victim." Tony answered.

"It doesn't even seem like the local authorities we know and love," Tony continued. "When I worked in the Baltimore PD, we never gave a case like this away, this looks like a potential serial killer. We'd hang on to it and try to steal the glory."

"Charming." Kate commented.

"Big city crime is different than your fancy secret service stuff."

"Fancy secret service stuff?!" She nearly shouted.

Tony looked about to give a reply when Gibbs shouted them both down.

"Enough! If you two put as much energy into this case as you do into arguing with each other we'd have it solved by now."

Silence followed him. Words were not spoken in the conference room for a full five minutes while the team sat in thought.

"We could always just put this one off until Ducky and Abby come back with an identification. We're stressing out over nothing until we know if they can get something out of it." Tony suggested.

"NCIS doesn't push things to the back burner because it gets too hard." Gibbs returned, then softened. "But we don't seem to have many leads to follow. Tony, go to the police station that passed jurisdiction to us on this, find out why they were so eager to give the case away."

Tony stood up immediately. "On it Boss."

"Kate, check the entire Navy to see how many personnel are missing total. Scratch off the women, and men that are more or less than four inches away from Ducky's assumed height. Form a list and we'll go over it later."

"That's going to be a huge list."

"We have to start somewhere."

-----

As it turned out, the list was easier to generate than Kate had feared. The Naval branch of the Pentagon kept such records updated daily. It was a simple matter of having a secretary in the Pentagon messanger them over to Kate.

"Four hundred and seventeen!" Kate exclaimed to herself.

Luckily the secretary sent over a computer disc with the files on them, and not actual manila folders. She immediately cut out all the women from the list, which cut out roughly a hundred names.

"Guess it's still a man's navy." She said sarcastically to no one in particular.

With three hundred and twenty names still left on the list, she got to work. She eliminated those who were too tall and too short, another eighty names off the list. She tapped a pencil on the keyboard, trying to think of more criteria to use to refine the search.

Suddenly she dropped the pencil and pressed a button on her phone.

"Morgue."

"Ducky, it's Kate. What's the victim's eye color?"

"Impossible to tell Kate, the victim's eyes were cut out, and they lose their coloration after being detached and dead for so long, the cells have already died."

"What about hair color, or age?"

"Hair color I can give you, brown. Age I can't tell you for sure, but I can give you an educated guess."

"I'll take it Ducky."

"I'd say no older than forty five, and probably not younger than twenty-two. He's done with puberty, everything is fully formed. Hope that helps, I'll get back to you and Jethro when I finish my autopsy."

"Thanks Ducky."

Imputing the new parameters she eliminated another hundred names from the list, mostly eighteen year old enlistees.

"Still one hundred forty left."

She got up from her desk and took the list to Gibbs. After explaining who she had eliminated and why, Gibbs made another cut.

"Alright, keep only active duty personnel who at one time had active flight status. Our victim was at one time a naval aviator, we have to stick to that, or we have to wait for however long it takes Ducky to figure it out himself."

Kate tapped some keys and afterwards they were left with eight names.

"Anything distinctive about these men? Anything that Ducky could find immediately that would set them apart?"

"One is missing his kidneys, one is missing half his liver from a recent transplant. We have blood types for all of them."

"Get Ducky."

Again she called down to Ducky.

"Ducky, what's the blood type of the victim?"

"One moment Kate." In the background she could hear him talking.

"No Gerald, that lab sample there. You know before they could accurately determine blood samples and doctors attempted direct blood transfusions, the mix of blood would clot and congeal inside the recipient's veins. Their blood literally turned to a jelly like substance and they..."

"Ducky!" Kate and Gibbs yelled as one.

"Sorry. Yes I have it right here. Type AB negative, the rarest of the types of blood you can have. Please now, no more interruptions or I'll never get this autopsy done."

Ducky hung up and Gibbs turned to see what Kate's results were.

"Well?"

"Lieutenant Max Janson. Missing for two days, reported after he failed to report for a physical examination."

"Why wasn't he on the lists you and Tony came up with?"

"He's officially assigned to the _Kennedy_ battle group in Hawaii. He's TAD to Norfolk to work on a new carrier landing system. That would explain why he didn't show up on any of our checks."

Gibbs mulled that over. "Well, looks like we have a victim. How long as he been at Norfolk? Where is his bunk?"

"Just over four months. He's at the Naval Air Station. We can get directions to the bunk when we get there."

"Call Tony, tell him to meet us there ASAP."

"Sure."

-----

An hour later the three of them marched into the base main office at Norfolk Naval Air Station.

"Agent Gibbs, NCIS. This is Agent Dinozzo and Agent Todd. We need to see your commanding officer about Lieutenant Janson."

The young recruit in front of him nodded. "Yes sir!"

He disappeared behind a door in the back, and moments later the NCIS team was ushered into the Admiral's office.

"A pleasure as always Agent Gibbs."

"Wish we could meet under different circumstances for once Admiral West."

"Well, what can I do for you? My midshipman said you are here about our missing Lieutenant Janson?"

Gibbs nodded. "Admiral, we believe we found his body yesterday in the woods outside DC."

West's smile cracked at that. "Your proof?"

"Janson is the right age, height, hair color, and blood type. The only match for the criteria of missing naval aviators."

"What can I do to help?"

Gibbs smiled. It was nice working with helpful line officers, as opposed to officials in Washington who only knew how to get in the way.

"Release Janson's medical records to our medical examiner. We can authenticate his identity immediately and continue with our investigation. Then we will need the full cooperation of your base personnel and access for interviews."

West raised an eyebrow at the seemingly large demand. "Of course Agent Gibbs. The record will be transferred immediately."

"Is there a place on base where we can stay in the mean time?"

Kate and Tony in the mean time stood silently in the background, somewhat unused to Gibbs totally leaving them out of a conversation. But they chose not to jump in.

"Yes, have my midshipman out front show you to a staff conference room down the hall."

Gibbs smiled again. "Thank you, sir."

"A pleasure as always Agent Gibbs."

Down the hall, Gibbs immediately turned to Tony.

"Well?"

"About what I expected," Tony began. "Turns out there was a murder just like this a few months back. The local police were totally stumped by it, never even identified the body of the victim, gave up and pushed it to the back burner. When they found out the second victim was a naval aviator, they pushed it off on us as fast as possible."

"Trying to land us with the fallout?" Kate asked.

"Certainly looks that way. Cops don't usually turn a case like this away, but this station is way underfunded, they just don't have the resources to examine this case like we do. They didn't want the political pressure from the Chief and the Mayor, so they pawned it off on us."

Gibbs rolled his eyes. "Did they at least give you the file from the first case?"

"No."

Kate and Gibbs both started to glare at him, until he pulled a file out of the folds in his coat.

"Fortunately there was a new secretary working at the front desk." He smiled predatorily. "I got the file, and a busy Saturday night this weekend."

Gibbs smiled. "Just when I start to doubt you..."

"I know Boss, thanks."

"You disgust me." Kate scoffed.

"Aw come on Kate, I did it for the sake of justice!"

She rolled her eyes and Gibbs ignored them both as he opened the file and spread it over the table in the room.

"Looks the same to me. At least their crime scene photographer looks halfway decent. He got all hieroglyphics around the body, five just like last time. And the victim looks the same too."

Kate pulled out her briefcase and removed the file they had built up so far on Janson. They compared the two for the next five hours. Finally Ducky called with news.

"Well done Jethro. Dental records match perfectly. You have yourself a victim."

"Thanks Ducky. Tomorrow we'll have records for you on the first victim."

"First victim? So this is a serial killer?"

"Looks that way. Good work."

The line went dead and the NCIS team got back to work.

-----

The following day they commenced with their interviews of the base staff. Twelve hours of interviews all focused on one direction.

"Everyone I interviewed described him as extremely religious, he visited the base chaplain a lot."

Kate agreed with Tony. "Same here. He's a Catholic, devout by all accounts. I think our next interviewee should be the chaplain."

"Do we have the identity of the first victim yet?" Gibbs asked.

"If the victim is a civilian we'll probably never know. But Ducky said he was going to check the blood type against the base personnel here over the past few months, then he'll use that list to check the dental records for a match."

"Anyone wanna bet our first victim is a highly devout catholic?" Gibbs said.

"Certainly looks like a safe bet Boss." Tony answered.

They soon found themselves in front of the base church. As they were walking in, Gibbs' cell phone went off.

"Gibbs." He answered.

"Jethro, I have a positive identification on the first victim. Lieutenant Mark DeHavilland."

"DeHavilland? Any relation to..."

"Unknown. I'm about finished with the autopsy, I'll have a report ready for you with my conclusions within the hour."

"Alright Ducky, call me when you're done."

"Of course Jethro."

Again the line went dead and the three NCIS agents entered the church.

"We have a positive ID on the first victim?" Kate asked.

"Lieutenant Mark DeHavilland."

"Well, now we have some more questions for the padre."

Gibbs gave Kate a look but said nothing. Inside they found a priest sitting in the front pew alone. The church was otherwise empty.

"Father?"

The priest turned at Gibbs' words.

"Welcome. I'm Father Mulhanney. How can I help you?"

"Father, I'm Agent Gibbs, these are Agents Todd and Dinozzo. We're NCIS. We have some questions for you."

"Of course, there are no lies in God's house."

Kate raised an eyebrow at that, but no one seemed to notice.

"Father, what can you tell me about a Lieutenant Max Janson?"

"Max? He comes here almost every day, with the exception of the last few days. I hear he's gone missing, very troubling news. I've prayed these last couple nights to God for his safe return."

Gibbs grimaced. "I'm sorry to say Father that we found the body of Max Janson in the woods outside Baltimore two days ago."

"Dead? Max?"

"Sorry Father, but we need to ask you some questions about Max."

"Of course, what would you like to know?"

"What was your relationship with him?" Gibbs jumped right into the questioning.

"I was Max's priest. He confided in me almost daily, prayed, helped out around the church and even in the surrounding community. He is, was, a good man."  
"Any idea on why someone would want to kill him?" Kate asked.

Mulhanney paused for a second, his mouth opening as if he wanted to say something, and then closing again as if thinking better of it. Finally he spoke.

"I can't imagine who would want to kill such a good and kind human being."

Gibbs gave Kate and Tony a sidelong glance that the others matched.

"What about Lieutenant Mark DeHavilland?" Tony put forward.

"Mark? He's been missing for months, presumed dead. But no one knows how or where. What has happened to him?" Father Mulhanney was very worked up and very agitated now.

"What can you tell us about him?" Gibbs ignored his question.

"A troubled man. Problems have plagued him since his youth. I worked with him a lot to try and come to grips with his demons. His disappearance was no great surprise to me. Please tell me, what has become of him?"

"He was murdered a few months ago in the same fashion as Max Janson."

The NCIS agents noticed Mulhanney's skin visibly change to a pale color as the blood drained from his face.

"Father? Are you alright?" Tony asked.

"Yes, thank you Agent Dinozzo. Tell me, are any of you Catholic?"

Kate and Gibbs shook their heads and looked at Tony, expecting him to do the same.

"I am."

"Really? God be with you Agent Dinozzo."

Then Father Mulhanney got up and left the main hall of the church for his inner chambers. The NCIS team had no choice but to leave the church.

"Well?" Gibbs said when they got away from the church.

"He did it." Kate said firmly.

"What?" Tony bursted out.

"You saw how he reacted when you asked him if anyone had a motive to kill Janson, he evaded, and he knew something."

"He just found out that two of his friends and parishioners were murdered, under those circumstances any one of us would react that way. On top of that, he's a priest, if he knew things confided to him in confession by the Lieutenants he couldn't tell us anyway."

"An excuse. For all we know he used the information he learned in confessional as material to mark his victims. Look at the way they were killed, a religious ceremony? I think we have ourselves a killer."

Tony held his tongue at a look from Gibbs, but it was easy to sense the palpable tension in the air.

"Perhaps. But we still have a lot of unanswered questions. Tomorrow we need to check with the families of the two victims to try and find out what exactly the criteria is for the murderer."


	3. Sins of the Father

"Mrs. Janson, what can you tell us about your husband?" Kate asked.

Just ten minutes earlier Mrs. Janson was informed of her husband's death. Tears still broke her sentences periodically.

"He was a good father. Taught his children right from wrong."

"We talked to Father Mulhanney at the base..."

Her eyes sharpened at that. "I don't trust that man. Max went to see him as soon as he was assigned his TAD assignment here. He thought it would take awhile so we moved the family here, expecting to move back to Hawaii in a couple months. But after a few weeks of seeing Father Mulhanney, Max starting sounding like a religious zealot."

"What was he like before he saw Father Mulhanney?"

"Normal. Normal for Max anyway."

She seemed troubled despite her answer, more than grief was showing through her eyes. Gibbs and Tony totally missed it. However, Kate's advanced training, coupled with her woman's intuition saw it immediately.

"Mrs. Janson, is there something you're not telling us?"

She looked away then raised her hand to cover her mouth. Then she looked back at them, her eyes wide and filled with even more tears now.

"Yes. Max was...seeing someone else at the base."

"Another woman?" Gibbs asked.

"Of course another woman." Mrs. Janson snapped.

Kate headed Gibbs off. This was not a conversation Mrs. Janson wanted to have with a male agent, and Kate knew it.

"How do you know?"

"A woman knows. She called here a lot, Max lied about it, and I even caught her leaving the house one night when I got home early from a day trip I took."

"Did that change after he started seeing Father Mulhanney?"

She nodded. "I never caught wind of her again after Max's transformation. I guess he cleaned up his act. At any rate, whenever he came home late, I never worried about where he was, I always assumed he was out helping out in the neighborhood. He even invited me to spend a lot more time with him in his volunteer stuff."

"So would you call it a positive or a negative change overall?" Kate pressed.

"Max was a good man. A very good man. He strayed, but he changed. I don't know how much of that had to do with Father Mulhanney, but for better or for worse I still don't trust the man. Maybe it's just a feeling, but I trust my feelings."

"Thank you Mrs. Janson."

They left her house and made for the house of Mark DeHavilland. On the way there, the car was abuzz with speculation.

"Well there's your motive, he must have killed Janson for his sin."

"When was the last time you heard of a murderous Catholic priest who killed his parishioners for sin?" Tony asked somewhat angrily.

Gibbs turned at that. "You seem mighty defensive of the good priest Tony."

He shrugged and relaxed a bit. "People shouldn't give in to what they hear on TV. The church did a lot of good where I grew up."

Kate softened up a bit at Tony's genuine heartfelt reaction. "Perhaps Tony, but what other suspects do we have at the moment? You have to admit there's at least a chance, and he's the best we have at the moment."

He said nothing however.

"Circumstantial evidence at this point," Gibbs commented. "However, Kate is right, he is the most suspicious person at this point."

Minutes later they were at the Dehavilland home. Unlike the previous home, the Dehavilland house was rather large, the biggest on the block and well kept. At the door they were met by a servant.

"Can I help you?" He said snootily.

"Agent Gibbs, NCIS. I need to speak with Mrs. DeHavilland if she is available."

The servant gave him a quick once over and didn't like what he saw. "NCIS?"

Tony jumped in and smiled. "Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Please go and tell Mrs. DeHavilland we're here to see her, thanks Jeeves."

The man glowered a bit at that, but he left the door open as he went to tell her. He returned a moment later.

"This way please."

They were shown into a fancy sitting room where Mrs. DeHavilland was waiting for them.

"Agent Gibbs? How can I help you?"

"Mrs. DeHavilland, there are Agents Todd and Dinozzo. We're here to ask you about your husband, Mark."

"Mark..." She said the name and trailed off as if searching for a memory.

"Mrs. DeHavilland, what kind of man was your husband?" Tony asked.

"A good man." She answered immediately.

They waited patiently for her to continue.

"When I heard he went missing I was very confused. He was well liked, had no enemies per se. They liked him at the base, at church, everywhere. He had his problems, and some trouble when he was younger, but that was in the past."

Her answers seemed to closely mirror those of Mrs. Janson, this was something Tony especially honed in on, only not from woman's intuition, rather this from cop intuition.

"Mrs. Janson, what was your husband's relationship with Father Mulhanney at the base church?" He asked.

She paled and froze at that but tried to hold her composure. "Father Mulhanney was his priest. He was an interesting man. Something funny about him I could never quite put my finger on, but I never spent a great deal of time with him. Still, Mark spoke highly of him. He did help Mark through several rough patches, which I will forever be thankful for. But still, there's that funny feeling."

Tony nodded and smiled, not his charming smile, but rather a sympathetic smile that went far to put Mrs. DeHavilland at ease.

"What aren't you telling us Mrs. DeHavilland?" He said softly.

She was neither shocked nor angry at the abruptness of his question. Gibbs focused in on her reaction, knowing Tony was on to something.

"Mark..."

The room was quiet enough to hear a feather falling to the ground.

"Shortly before he disappeared, he told me he was gay."

Gibbs raised an eyebrow at that, as did the rest of the NCIS team.

"Did he tell Father Mulhanney?" Gibbs asked quietly.

She nodded. "Yes, before he told me. I think Father Mulhanney was the one who convinced him to tell me."

After another prolonged silence, Mrs. DeHavilland finally asked the question they had been waiting for.

"Why are you here about Mark anyway? Have you found him? Is he okay?"

Kate stepped in to handle this one. "I'm sorry to tell you Mrs. DeHavilland, but Mark was murdered two months ago. We just recently positively identified him using dental records from the base. The police station that found his body can forward his remains to you, so you can have a proper burial."

Her reaction was muted.

"I knew. Or rather, I suspected. A man like Mark, he was faithful, and deeply devoted to his family, which is why I suspect he kept his true feelings a secret for so long, he would never just leave his. I knew deep down that only death would take him from us."

"I'm sorry for your loss ma'am." Tony offered.

"Thank you. Please, if I can do anything else to help you, do not hesitate to call or come back. My door is always open."

The team got up and made their way to the front door. The servant was at the door scowling at them as they left. Tony put his sunglasses on and nodded to him.

"Thanks Jeeves." He said as he smiled.

-----

Back at the NCIS office, they met to discuss the current case.

"Well, at least we have a pattern established. Naval aviators with known sins are killed. Both are known to be close to Father Mulhanney." Kate summarized.

"That's not all. There's no proof Mulhanney had any cause to murder them. You heard both wives say that Mulhanney was a positive influence on their husbands before their deaths. Why bother turning them around if he was planning on murdering them?" Tony shot back.

Gibbs cut off Kate's reply. "He's right, that doesn't make sense. But then, Kate's right, he does seem suspicious, from our interview with him and from what the wives said, something is wrong."

He shook his head and directed their attention to the file sitting in front of him.

"Ducky established the cause of death on Janson's murder as poisoning. That would surprise me, but then, nothing about this case has been normal so far."

"You can say that again Boss." Tony agreed.

"We need to develop a new lead. The Director is getting impatient, and has other cases for us to be working on."

"No leads means no leads Boss. Even at the BPD sometimes we just had to leave a case alone for a week. A random thought will come to you in the middle of a day when you aren't thinking about it and it will crack the case wide open. But you have to not be thinking about it for it to happen."

Kate rolled her eyes at that but something sparked in Gibbs' eyes. "Fine, let's give it a try. It'll make the Director happy, and it just might work."

"Thanks Boss."

"One week Tony. If nothing happens, something _will_ happen to you."

Tony's smile dampened for a moment, but perked back up when Kate smirked at him. A week would tell.

-----

Four days of waiting did not sit well with Kate or Gibbs. They were restless and anxious to solve the case. Fortunately they wouldn't have to wait much longer. Entering the office on the fifth day, Gibbs was informed of another murder.

Tony and Kate were just walking in behind him.

"Let's go."

The usual excitement that came before visiting the site of a murder was muted.

"Tell Abby to come too, have her bring her digital camera."

They made better time to this site. It was just off Norfolk Naval Base, not out in the woods this time. They arrived to the same scene of gore they were now familiar with.

"Anything different?" Gibbs said upon coming on the scene.

"The hieroglyphics." Both Abby and Ducky said at once.

"The murder itself is pretty much identical, as far as the precision of mutilation and intactness of the body. And the two hieroglyphics that represent Osiris and Abydos are here, but the other three are different." Ducky explained.

"Did you have any luck decoding the first two crime scenes Abs?" Tony asked.

"Lieutenant Janson's yes. Roughly translated they stood for flier, adulterer, and oath breaker. Oath breaker could also stand for sinner, the Egyptian language doesn't translate precisely to present day English."

The three lead investigator's took a sharp intake of breath when they heard that.

"Anything similar about the symbols in the other two cases?"

"In the first case, Lieutenant DeHavilland, flier and oath breaker. We haven't gotten the third yet. For this one..."

She wandered over to rocks set around the body, where the symbols were inscribed.

"Abydos, Osiris, oath breaker. I don't recognize the other two."

She snapped photos of them, which she would later put in her computer to try and translate.

"Ducky, first thing I want is cause of death. If it's poison again I want to know." Gibbs gave the site a hard stare, searching for differences from the last two cases, but everything was the same.

"Hey Boss?"

Gibbs turned to Tony, expecting some sarcastic remark, but instead saw him kneeling next to one of the rocks with a piece of flimsy paper in his hand.

"Well?" Gibbs said impatiently.

"It says 'The sins of the city shall be covered in ice, and be made to suffer as I have.'"

Gibbs' face was one of total confusion, a look that was mirrored on Tony's face.

"Kate? Ducky? Abby?" Gibbs asked.

Ducky and Abby both shook their heads but Kate spoke up. "I think it's a Bible passage."

Tony rolled his eyes at that. "That isn't a Bible passage."

Gibbs broke in before they could start arguing.

"It sounds fairly Biblical to me, and we don't have anything else at the moment. Abby, when you get back to the office your first job is to find out where that line is from. Then get working on the rest of these symbols."

"Ducky, get me an identity. We've got the game plan down for that now."

"I'm on the case Jethro." Ducky replied enthusiastically.

"Kate, go to the last crime scene and look for a note like this one. Serial killers don't just start leaving cryptic messages in the middle of their spree. Dinozzo, head to the first site."

"It's a long shot Boss, that site is more than two months cold."

Gibbs gave Tony his patented 'Gibbs: Don't Give Me Any Crap' look and Tony left without another word.

-----

They didn't meet again until the next day. Gibbs wanted fresh minds to attack the new information that would hopefully pour in when they got to the office. He got what he wanted.

"Alright people. Tell me what we've got here?"

Kate moved to speak first but was interrupted by McGee entering the room none too softly.

"Sorry." He said sheepishly.

She continued as if nothing happened. "I went over the last crime scene and didn't see anything until I went to leave. I found this about ten meters away from the site. I'm guessing it blew away."

A sheet of paper appeared then in her hand and she placed it on the table.

"It's another quote, or it looks like it anyway. 'Loose your arrows and hear devil fire scream, beware you thee sinner!"

"Anyone?" Gibbs asked.

"Opherion. Ancient Greek writer. It's a text that is usually left alone by American philosophers and literary giants. But he was widely regarded as a powerful religious figure in the early days of the combined Greek kingdom." Ducky answered.

"Tony?" Gibbs prompted.

"It took me three and a half hours, but I found a note nearly buried in dirt and leave at the first murder site." Tony pulled the note out and read it, somewhat haltingly as the words were marred and smeared by the effects of nature.

"'The time is upon us, cry havoc to you all, and let slip the dogs of war!' Even I know that one though, that's Shakespeare."

"Shakespeare, an ancient Greek religious figure, and what? Abby, did you get confirmation on the quote we found yesterday as a Biblical quote?"

"Sorry Gibbs. I got a lot of hits on words in the phrase, but no exact quote. It didn't hit on any Bible site I visited though."

"What's the quote?" McGee asked.

"' The sins of the city shall be covered in ice, and be made to suffer as I have'" Abby answered.

McGee chuckled about with his goofy uber dork laugh. "That's a Batman quote."

"What?" The rest of the room seemed to ask in unison.

"Sure, episode four hundred twenty, "Wasteland" pitted Batman against Victor Fries, more commonly known as Mr. Freeze to most everyone outside the comic..."

"Get to the point McGee." Gibbs growled impatiently.

"Mr. Freeze said that, mostly to himself after his wife Nora left him upon being cured of a life threatening illness. When she saw what he had become, she couldn't spend the rest of her life with him, despite the fact that he became that way specifically to save her life. He really is the most tortured and tragic character in..."

"McGee!"

"Sorry." He again said sheepishly.

Abby however was smiling proudly in his direction. He smiled back at her and scratched the back of his head.

"So we have these notes he's left at the crime scenes. Ducky, cause of death?"

"Poisoning again."

"Abs, did you get the translation on those other symbols?"

"The last symbol for Lieutenant DeHavilland was something along the lines of dualist, but not the kind that fights with swords, more like someone who leads two lives. For our third victim, Abydos and Osiris again, as well as oath breaker. The other two are 'thief' and roughly, very roughly, translated 'fixer.'"

"Is this guy just trying to confuse the hell out of is? This is more complicated than almost any murder case that comes to mind." Tony said in exasperation.

"There are a lot of superfluous facts here. I don't understand the point of these notes, and we are spending a rather large amount of time decoding them, figuring out the identity of the victims."

"Ducky's right. He's probably staying one step ahead of us each time while we spend days just trying to figure out the basics from the last job. He's smart. Crazy, but smart." Tony said.

"This all seems to be coming back to sin and religion though. The priest is still our best suspect." Kate insisted.

Silence followed. Gibbs could sense that Tony wanted to rebut her claim, but held his tongue instead. Much to Gibbs' enjoyment.

"She's right. This does keep coming back to sin and religion. I think it's time we pay another visit to the church, and Father Mulhanney."

Everyone nodded, even Tony, and again they were on their way back to the base church.


	4. Reckoning

They entered to find the church empty.

"Father Mulhanney?" Tony called out.

Silence answered him.

"Maybe he's in the confessional booth." Kate suggested.

She walked over to the booth and listened for a second, then shook her head.

"Doesn't it seem strange to anyone else that the justifications for three murders now have probably come from this booth here?" Kate implored.

Tony cocked his head to the side in what may have been his first real appraisal of Kate's theory. Gibbs however lit up at her words.

"The booth..."

"What is it Boss?"

"Call Abby, tell her to get down here now with equipment to find listening devices."

Tony pulled out his phone and started dialing.

"What are you thinking Gibbs?" Kate asked.

"I'm thinking you're right, that booth could be the cause of these murders, but not necessarily the man in the booth."

Fifteen minutes later Abby was in the booth. It took her all of thirty seconds to discover a small electronic eavesdropping device planted in the booth.

"It's an older model, nothing like what the actual spy agencies use today, unless you're spying for Argentina, or some other country new to the spy game."

"Is there a way to trace it back to its source?" Tony asked.

Kate and Gibbs smiled at that.

"If it is an American made device, it has a registry number, and had to be specifically signed out for a task. First we check with the electronics office here on the base, and if we need to, we head out to Fort Meade or Langley to check NSA and CIA to see if they know its history." Kate answered.

They wasted no time getting to the office on base that held their listening devices and other electronic warfare devices. A female chief petty officer met them at the front desk.

"Agent Gibbs, NCIS, I need to know where this came from." He announced without preamble, handing the listening device across the desk to the woman.

Her eyes went wide for a moment then she grabbed the device from him and peered at it for a moment. Minutes later she was tapping away wildly at her computer.

"This listening device, registry MXF 340320 Alpha, was signed out to an Ensign Alexander Offre, exactly one month ago today at four fifteen in the afternoon. It's designated purpose was to test a new jamming system being developed in the office of electronic warfare on the base." She said.

Gibbs smiled at her. "Thank you Chief Petty Officer."

Away from the office they discussed their new find.

"Well that was the easiest break yet in the case." Tony commented.

"No kidding. But still, a break is a break. Let's go see Ensign Offre."

Offre turned out to be a young man just out of the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Gibbs fairly assailed him with questions, trying to browbeat an answer out of him quickly, and the scared Ensign answered his questions quickly and honestly, painfully honest.

"Agent Gibbs, I told you, I faked the story about the new jamming device so I could get the bug to spy on my girlfriend. I think she's seeing someone else and I wanted to be sure. But it was stolen from my footlocker the day after I got it. Honest!"

For five minutes straight now Gibbs had been using his 'Don't Mess With Me' stare on Ensign Offre, and he appeared to have cracked under it.

"Gibbs, I think he's telling the truth." Kate said.

"Yeah." Gibbs answered.

They left his bunk and headed back to the office. When they got there they found a very excited Ducky.

"Jethro, I have an identity for you on the latest victim."

"Already?" Gibbs asked.

"Yes of course. It's that of a young mechanic, Machinists Mate Third Class Ari Maresh. He fixed planes that came ashore from carriers that needed major structural repairs and couldn't be fixed at sea. He died of poisoning."

"That's fast work Ducky."

"Well when you know what to look for..."

"Great work Ducky."

Gibbs moved past him and headed for his office to relax for a moment but Ducky wasn't done yet.

"I did some more research on the Cult of Osiris. Nothing from ancient times will really help us as far as profiling a present day murderer, but there was a resurgence of the Cult in Britain in the mid 20th century. Profiles were done then to try and ascertain what a potential cultist might be like to try and identify them before it was too late."

"And?" Gibbs prompted.

"The researcher, Dr. Blair found that most Cultists were men, late teens to early twenties, had highly religious backgrounds, parents were killed before they reached puberty, and most actually joined the military at some point in their life to escape the life they were left with as a result of their parents dying."

Gibbs mulled that over for a moment. "Good work Ducky. Can you work with Kate to try and run that information through the base computer, try to find a match?"

"Of course Jethro."

-----

Hours later Gibbs' peace was interrupted by Kate and Ducky bursting into his office.

"This better be good."

"Don't worry Gibbs, you'll like this."

"Well?" Gibbs said with incredible impatience.

"We ran the psychological profile through the base registry. Seventeen names came out that were identical to the profile in every way. Four of them transferred out of the base to Iraq, and one has been bedridden with cancer."

"That's still twelve names. Twelve more potential suspects is good news?"

"One of them is the room mate of Ensign Offre." Kate said as she smiled.

Gibbs smiled too and shook his head. "Alright, let's go."

Kate, Tony and Gibbs arrived back at the room of Ensign Offre soon after. The young Ensign was surprised to see them, and panicked immediately.

"Agent Gibbs! I swear I was telling you the truth!" He said upon their entry.

"Relax Offre, we believe you. We need to ask you some questions about your room mate, Ensign Harold James." Gibbs opened with.

"Harry? What for?"

"Do you know where he is?" Gibbs continued.

Offre cocked his head to the side in thought. "No."

"How about when he's coming back?"

"Nope. Come to think of it, I haven't even seen Harry in a couple days. Maybe you should check with his CO."

"Why is an Ensign bunked with a Machinist's Mate anyway?" Tony piped in.

"More ships in port rearming and repairing than usual, more men than there is space to put them."

Tony nodded and moved over to James' footlocker.

"Masterlock." He commented.

Kate walked up to it and cracked her knuckles. "No problem." She said.

Two minutes later the tamper resistant lock was picked and his footlocker was opened. Gibbs wasn't surprised by what they found.

"Well will you look at that. Shakespeare, Batman comics, and a book of ancient Greek writings."

"Pretty damning evidence." Kate commented.

"Still circumstantial, but I'd say we have our man." Tony said.

Kate gave him a look that almost seemed soft and apologetic, but it lasted for only a moment. Still, Tony caught it, and the palpable tension in the air between them dissipated slightly.

"So we have our lead suspect, but where is he?" Gibbs said.

"Better check with his CO." Kate suggested.

All the while Ensign Offre was quietly sitting on his bunk on the other side of the room holding his breath. He let it out only when the NCIS team was far away from his room.

At the repair yard, they quickly found James' Commanding Officer.

"Who the hell are you?" They were greeted with.

"NCIS. I'm Agent Gibbs."

"Oh." His expression softened. "Captain Willard." He announced.

"Captain, we need to ask you about Machinist's Mate Harold James."

"Oh?" Now he really seemed interested. "Do you know where he is?"

Gibbs was slightly taken aback at that. Used to more aggressive questioning, he was seldom asked the very question he planned to ask just moments before he could ask it.

"No we don't, we were hoping you did." Kate said before Gibbs could say anything.

Willard shrugged.

"He hasn't reported for duty in two days now. I sent the MPs to try and find him yesterday and they came up empty. He's good at what he does, even if he always was a little weird and quiet. But I figured I'd give him one more day until I officially reported him AWOL. What do you want him for?"

"Murder." Gibbs answered gravely.

"Murder? I guess nothing surprises me these days. He always was a funny one, though I guess you never can tell a murderer just by lookin' at em can ya?" Willard replied back.

"If you see him..." Kate trailed off.

"You'll be my second call, after the MPs."

Gibbs smiled. "Thank you Captain.

-----

At the NCIS office the next morning they got what they hoped would be the last call to a crime scene that brought them face to face with this brutal ritual.

"My word." Ducky breathed when they got to the body.

Mutilated as he was, the body of Father Mulhanney was still recognizable.

They were all visibly shaken, perhaps Kate more than the others, visibly racked by her feelings of guilt at having previously so aggressively pegged the man for a murderer.

"Details?" Gibbs said, breaking them out of their reverie.

"The symbols look mostly familiar. The same two that are on all the others, and I recognize one of them as 'dualist,' and the fourth one looks a lot like 'priest' which makes sense. And yes, the last one is 'oath breaker'." Ducky said dispassionately.

"Note?"

"Here Boss."

Tony handed Gibbs another of the cryptic notes.

"'If this is the world we've become, the end is more welcome then another chapter'."

This time no one said a thing at all. They were staring at the ripped up body of Father Mulhanney.

"I don't get it. 'Dualist' in the other murder meant he was gay." Kate said.

"Yeah, I caught that too." Tony agreed.

"One last trip to the church?" Kate asked, looking at Gibbs.

He nodded.

On the way to the church they had the last of their in transit conversations.

"I've been thinking about the listening device. The woman at the base said the bug was checked out exactly one month ago. But the first murder was two months ago. The recent murders okay, I can see how he would have done those, but how did he know about Lieutenant DeHavilland?" Kate asked.

"Maybe he found out by himself then figured he'd bug the booth. We can't exactly ask Father Mulhanney if he knew James or not, but we can search his chambers for notes about him. They had to be connected in some way, otherwise Mulhanney wouldn't be dead right now." Gibbs said in reply.

At the church they immediately made way for the inner chambers of the now deceased Father Mulhanny.

"Is it right to be breaking into the inner chambers of a dead clergyman? Legalities of searching his office without a warrant, isn't there something morally wrong about this?" Tony said.

"When was the last time I ever heard you giving a speech on morality?" Gibbs retorted.

Tony grinned sheepishly and any lingering doubts were washed away. They searched through piles and piles of notes, their trained eyes looking for the name 'Harold James' with laser like accuracy, trained by years of similar work. A half hour later, Kate struck gold.

"Here."

She held up a stack of handwritten notes, but not the handwriting of Father Mulhanney.

"'I only think of you at work. My CO constantly tells me I'm a hard worker, but that's only because I wish to finish faster so I may leave and get close to you faster.'"

"Love notes to Father Mulhanney? From who?" Gibbs asked.

Kate raised an eyebrow.

"You won't believe this."

"James?" Gibbs asked expectantly.

"You got it."

He snorted in half disbelief half victory. "Kate, start reading all those, we need to see if we can get some clues out of those and find Harold James. Time is critical now. With Mulhanney dead, and James missing, he could be on the run."

"Alright Gibbs."

On the way back to the office, Gibbs' phone went off.

"Gibbs." He said upon opening his phone.

"Jethro, it's Ducky."

"You have something?"

"Yes, that quote from the last murder site struck a chord with me but I couldn't identify it until now. It's a quote from one of Socrates' disciples, though not Plato. Astrates, a lesser known man and far less prolific writer wrote that line when Socrates was forced to drink hemlock as a death sentence. He had a few writings in his day, though compared to Plato I don't see how anyone could really be considered a prolific writer. You should probably know that Astrates killed himself at the site of the first time he met Socrates, a temple in Athens, shortly after his mentor died. It was a peculiar form of death for the age too, suicide back then was far more..."

"Thanks Ducky."

The line went dead.

-----

"I really hate it when they do that." Ducky said to an empty room back at the NCIS office.

-----

"Ducky said the last quote was from a guy who killed himself shortly after his mentor was forced to drink hemlock. He did it at a temple, the place of their first meeting."

"That sounds eerily familiar. Kills himself after the death of his mentor in a church?" Tony said.

"Yeah, maybe too familiar." Gibbs replied.

Gibbs then wrenched the wheel around and spun the car in a 180-degree turn that left them traveling in the other direction on the highway as cars around them honked and slammed on their breaks in protest.

"Get Ducky, Abby, and McGee in a room at the office and put them on speaker phone. I want to know what all these quotes have in common, and I want to know now."

Five minutes later, just a short while away from the base now, the phone conference was ready to go.

"Do any of these other quotes have anything to do with suicide?" Gibbs asked at once.

"Well, Opherion did kill himself with poison after accidentally causing an innocent man to be stoned to death. Come to think of it, Marc Antony, the man Shakespeare was quoting in the first quote, killed himself with Cleopatra after losing a war with the nephew of Julius Ceasar, who was Antony's best friend, assassinated in a way that was partially Antony's fault. All did so with poison" Ducky said.

"McGee, what about the Batman thing?" Kate asked.

"Mr. Freeze does try to kill himself much later on in the series after accidentally causing the death of his wife. I don't remember how."

"Doesn't matter, I think we have ourselves a connection."

The line went dead again and Gibbs pressed down harder on the gas trying to race time to get back to the church.

-----

They arrived at the church moments later to find the front door locked.

"Kate!" Gibbs barked at her.

She kneeled down to try and pick the lock but was having no luck with it.

"It's too rusted."

Gibbs pulled out his sidearm and clipped off two quick shots into the door, then kicked it open. They rushed into the church and saw a man standing on the altar in the darkness at the head of the open hall. Only moonlight shown down upon him, illuminating him enough to be recognized from his service file as Harold James.

"James! You are under arrest for multiple first degree murders." Gibbs shouted across the room, approaching rapidly with his gun drawn and trained forward. Kate and Tony were hot on his heels.

They were only steps away when Tony's gun went off, knocking James from the altar to the ground.

"Tony!" Kate shouted.

"Dinozzo! What the hell is wrong with you?"

When they got to James, he was lying on the ground moaning, grasping his left shoulder with his right hand. Next to his left hand, Gibbs saw a loaded syringe full of an unknown substance.

"Tony?"

He shrugged. "The moonlight shined on it when we got close. I assumed he was about to use it before we got to him. I figured he'd be dead if I didn't do it, so there was a better chance of arresting him if I knocked him down from a distance."

Gibbs glared at him for a moment then softened to a smile. "Good work."

Tony now smiled too, as Kate pulled a cell phone from her pocket to call an ambulance.

-----

In the following days. Harold James awakened and immediately confessed to the murders that had occurred over the past couple months. He had in fact heard about Mark DeHavilland from Father Mulhanney, though it was never proven that Mulhanney himself was gay. With all loose ends tied up, and Harold James now serving a life sentence in an insane asylum, the case was officially closed out from NCIS records.

End.

((All characters from Navy NCIS are the property of CBS and David Bellisario. This is but my hopefully accurate attempt to create a new adventure for them. Let me know if you liked it, I may write another. I'm not a fan of the fanfics where crazy stuff and romances happen with the characters, but I'm good with case files like these. Readers who enjoy Lord of the Rings (also Monty Python and Star Wars), might enjoy my Parody of the Rings: The Fellowship. Feel free to check it out, it's pretty funny))


	5. Notes on the Story

I like the idea of doing this last chapter to comment on the story as a whole. I wrote one of these in the first story, but that was only because so many people asked about the title.

First off, I know many people corrected me on the fact that Kate is in fact Catholic. By the time I found out I was already more than half way done with the story, and didn't really feel like going back to alter the story that much for what seemed to me like that minor of a detail. Sorry to the readers, I know that's probably lazy of me, but I was trying to get this one done quickly to get to the next one I plan to write. And thank you to those that corrected me, I always try to be as true as I can be to the story, and I appreciate your efforts to keep me on track.

Other than that, this one required a lot more research than _Veritas et Aequitas_. All of the quotes I used in this one are real (good luck trying to find them on the Internet, it took me a trip to the library, which I almost never do). I'll admit I did however fudge the episode number on the Mr. Freeze quote. It IS a real quote from Mr. Freeze in Batman, but I honestly have no idea as to what cartoon episode or actual comic book number it was actually in.

The information on the Cult of Osiris and Hieroglyphics is also true and annoyingly well researched. Thankfully most of that IS on the internet.

In conclusion, I hadn't planned to write more than one or two of these. Quite frankly I think the first one was better than this. I think this one kinda sucked, and I wasn't as good at nailing the characters as before. But I also wrote it a lot faster than the first one. My goal for this story, for the next stories, and for the last one has been and will always be to make them read and sound like an actual episode of Navy NCIS. I do have full plots worked out for four more stories. After that I plan to do a tribute story to each of the characters, then that'll probably be it for my NCIS writing, unless I have another burst of inspiration.

For the few of you that have read both of my stories and liked them, I'm going to let you help decide which story I write next. Here are very short plot summaries stories I have worked out, you can either let me know in a review or email me at to let me know which you like the most. If I hear an outcry for a specific title, I'll do that one first.

1. Bethesda Naval Hospital is taken hostage by a group of ex Naval officers who have some strange demands. When Gibbs and the team are called in to solve the situation, old memories and tempers flare before the situation is resolved.

2. When the body of a naval aviator comes crashing through the roof of a suburban home, the NCIS team is called in to investigate. But what was first thought to be murder turns out to be far more complicated, and with far more deadly potential for the future.

3. When gravesites are found looted at Arlington National Cemetary, Gibbs and the team are called in to put an end to the grave robbing. But when ghosts from the past come calling, it become far more complex than a simple robbery.

4. When a visiting Japanese Princess goes missing, Gibbs and the team are called in on special assignment to bring her back. But wading through the bureaucracy and turf wars in the American government are half the battle of retrieving her, leading to an ending no one will expect.


End file.
